


All Tweedy and Sarcastic

by wisdomeagle



Category: Buffy: The Vampire Slayer
Genre: Episode s06e07 Once More With Feeling, Episode: s06e08 Tabula Rasa, F/F, Gen, Goodbyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-08-10
Updated: 2004-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-10 02:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/94694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomeagle/pseuds/wisdomeagle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An early morning in the Magic Box when Giles doesn't have all the answers anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Tweedy and Sarcastic

  
Tara woke up before Willow did that morning. She'd seen it. She'd sung it. She'd wear the t-shirt later; now she needed to be elsewhere. She'd talk to Willow later; she'd worry about Buffy later. Walking home from the Bronze last night, she'd been silent and Dawn had been jittery, still doing little pirouettes, and Willow had been talking. Tara loved the way Willow babbled when she was nervous; Tara loved everything about Willow. Listening to her chatter nervously was just making it harder. So she woke up and slipped out of the house early that morning, peeking in at Dawn to make sure she was okay, hurrying past Buffy's room and trying not to think _she's miserable_.

She was going to the Magic Box, she realized once she was already on the streets, and that puzzled her and worried her. Magic had always been consolation, energies and spirits she could wrap herself in when she was scared and lonely. In magic she found courage, in magic she didn't need to talk, and she needed the magic. But not like Willow needed magic, not like Willow craved it. She couldn't begin to understand what Willow saw when she walked through the Magic Box. Tools? Temptations? Weapons? Did she see the way the charms harmonized, know how crystals felt when they were just properly attuned? Could she sense the richness of knowledge that permeated the shop? Did she smell the power, richer than incense and perfume? She'd always assumed that Willow came here and felt like she did, sensed what she sensed. She'd always assumed that she could understand Willow, that Willow understood her.

She'd been blind. She knew she'd been blind, and now she was scared, and was looking back on two years. She'd seen Willow and had--she hadn't known how to begin. She'd been nervous and jumpy when she talked to her, and Willow'd calmed her, made her look around and see that the world was full of--of excitement, of wonder, of intensity and joy. She'd been so scared, and Willow had made her calm again. She was still scared, but nothing could calm her. The feel of magic on her fingertips was dirty, a naughty secret, something that needed to be washed away in a flood of... of sanity. Of cleansing magic, she wanted to say, but the word magic made her think of Willow saying, "A spell, we'll do a spell! I know one that's so easy, and so much fun, really, nothing to worry about." Willow used to be such a worrier, and it was calming, having someone who was more frightened about the future than she was.

The Magic Box was always full of good energies; Anya and Giles were good people, and they'd all done good work there, filled the shop with their concern and their protection. This morning, she had to let herself in with her own key, which she found strange and disconcerting, but it still felt like protectiveness, and Willow's energy was so potent here, she could actually feel herself collapsing under the pressure of Willow's magicks, her weight, her touches, everything. It was the scary, queasy feeling of falling in love for the first time, and she could feel it every time she saw Willow, every time she fell asleep, every time she woke up, but she was giving it up, because she knew she wasn't supposed to feel that clench of fear that Willow wouldn't go to sleep, that Willow would stay up all night, cackling with power, changing them, changing her, changing the world, making it more Willow-like. What would tomorrow bring, what consequences, what spells? She didn't used to think of the world in terms of spells. And she didn't used to think of the world in terms of Willow.

She sat at the round table, no books on it this morning, nothing but a sheaf of homework that someone had left; she checked--incomprehensible equations meant Willow; she could still understand what Dawn was doing at school. She grit her teeth. She could still understand Dawn, period, and she didn't understand Willow.

  
"Tara."

Only one person said her name like that (and it wasn't Willow, who could say it a thousand ways, all sexy and demanding, and then all pleading and lost, and then, so angry, and defensive, and she knew, even in the midst of the swirly thought confusion that Willow had made, that mostly now Willow was just angry).

"Tara."

"Oh, sorry Giles. I'm distracted this morning."

"Because you're leaving," he said, not really fishing for the truth, she thought, just--curious. Concerned, maybe.

"The song. We sang about it," and how weird that was, "about leaving."

Giles nodded. "Will you leave?"

"Well, I won't leave town, if that's what you mean. I mean, I can't. I've got school, and Dawn needs me," us "and there's really nowhere else for me to go."

"Of course. But you're, er..."

"Yeah."

She'd never really gotten it, Willow's whole Giles thing. Willow said (oh so long ago, when there was no reason to doubt Willow's word) that Giles made her feel "important in a really unimportant way." She remembered it, because it had been the first time Willow had stayed the whole night and told her all about all her friends. They hadn't actually been dating-dating, then; they hadn't had that whole non-discussion followed by that very real kiss. They'd just done some spells, spent a lot of hours together, and Willow had told her about her ex-boyfriend and about Xander and about Giles. She said their names reverently, and she'd never dreamed that Willow could ever say her name like that--but she would, later. But she'd said Giles filled the space around him with this really sexy British-ness, that everything became "all tweedy and sarcastic. But then he looks at you, really looks, and you feel safe, even safer than when Buffy's watching your back. I don't know how he does it, Tara."

"Tara?"

She shook her head. "I don't really want to talk about it."

"None of my business, of course," he said with a shrug that was almost inviting, in a really non-intrusive way. Tweedy and sarcastic, huh? What were you thinking, love? She grabbed the nearest book she could find, started reading it, prayers she'd learned as a child, prayers comfortable as her mother's skirts.

Finally Tara said, "Willow's doing too much magic," in the quietest voice that would still be audible. She'd said it to Willow, but she couldn't imagine saying it to anyone else. It was like telling people what you did in bed--breaking an oath. It was like Anya, telling the world that Xander sometimes wore women's lingerie, and oh how she hadn't wanted to know that. "I'm leaving her because she's doing too much magic."

Giles looked at her, eyes hard. "Willow's always been careless about magic."

"She doesn't--she doesn't understand people's energy, or the connections, or anything. She doesn't pray."

"Willow didn't have a classical training. I wasn't qualified to give her that."

"You're defending her."

Giles sighed. "I'm defending myself, Tara. I feel responsible. And yet--there's nothing I could have done. Willow has refused guidance and caution time and time again."

"Should I--should I leave? Could I do something? Could I make her better?"

"It's your--Willow is your--" he coughed, "lover. Your choice must be your own." He glanced at her, caught her eye, and said, "You must do what you must. That's what you sang."

Tara was sure she must be hallucinating in the glaze of too-early and the weightiness of Willow, but she thought Giles sounded slightly--bitter. So instead of asking, "What would you do?" which was on the tip of her tongue, she asked, "Have you ever loved someone so much that you couldn't bear the thought of them ever doing anything bad? So much you thought they could do no wrong, so much it hurt you?" She'd never said so many words to Giles before, but they'd sung a duet the day before--his last patented Sunnydale bonding experience, she thought.

"Yes. Yes, I have," he said, but he said it so quietly Tara had to strain to catch it.

"What did you do?" When he didn't respond, she added, flustered, "No, that's not fair. It's none of my business."

"On the contrary," he said, cleaning his glasses, "I'm just absolutely certain that any advice I give you would be superfluous."

"But you're like, advice man. Willow said" she choked on the words, like Willow's name was a tongue forced down her throat, an unwelcome invasion, a tongue twitching in her brain and drawing jagged lines through all the words it didn't like "that you always give the best advice."

"Be that as it may--or rather, that's all well and good--but Willow never paid my advice any heed."

"But it was all good advice, anyhow."

She tried to read her book. The names of all the gods and goddesses were starting to blur in her head. She'd asked her mother if they were real or just fairy tales, and her mother had sat and listened to her heartbeat and said that magic was real and that was all she needed to know. Willow didn't believe in anything, didn't need to when she had all the power she needed resting just beneath her fingertips. The invocations were tools, were computer coding, and now she'd tapped into the source and didn't need gods anymore; she was interfacing with the motherboard. Not in a good, connect-y way, either. In a scary and cold way.

"Do you believe in gods?" she asked.

Giles didn't answer, just stared at her for a long time, like the question was the key to her insides. She felt uncomfortable, and she realized there were lots of different kinds of discomfort. There was discomfort like Willow keeping secrets, snapping out of their shared space when they were doing a spell, laughing at naughty jokes and unable to keep the magic out of the bedroom, so that she reeked of spells even when they were making love. And there was discomfort like not knowing how to look at Buffy when you knew that it was your fault that she was seeing everything through funhouse mirrors. And then there was the discomfort of having Giles look at her thoughtfully, and knowing that his voice could rip out her insides, and feeling that he was hurting every way from Tuesday, disappointed and lonely and bitter and afraid he was making a mistake, and that was the kind of discomfort that made her feel better, almost.

There was no better this year, only less worse. Buffy alive was less worse than Buffy dead, and Willow silent was less worse than Willow chattering and making her crazy in love all over instead of just plain crazy. Giles staring at her wasn't good, but it was less worse than having to look Willow in the eye, less worse than being scared of Giles, less worse than trying to tell him what was wrong and knowing he was full of sympathy and sadness but not advice, and that he had no way to make it better.

Tara hadn't known them when Giles was half of Willow's everything, when she'd written that essay for sophomore English about why her librarian was her hero, or when she'd stockpiled every "excused from class" note he'd written for her in an old shoebox, when Giles could do no wrong. She'd never thought Giles could save the world, so it wasn't like she was dying of disappointment with him, which was good, because disappointment with Willow and with herself were taking up all available disappointment slots in her brain.

She didn't know how many minutes it had been since she'd spoken when he said, "I'm leaving the day after tomorrow. There won't be any--no scenes, no little rubber monsters this time."

"I'll miss you," she said, and longed to give him something that would prove it was true.

He nodded, and she felt the glitter-glaze of morning erupt in her brain. It was surreal: the company, the shop, the energy, the realization that neither of them was going to be here next week, maybe not even tomorrow, and there was lightning somewhere; she wasn't sure if it was real or just (another) product of seeing the world through magic-colored glasses.

"You requested my advice?" he asked, finally, like she'd just walked in and he was a guidance counselor or something, like he actually had good advice to dispense and not just "get out of this town, Miss Maclay. Get out at all costs," like back in high school. No, Giles asked if she wanted his advice, and she said sure.

"Advice from someone who's been an old fool since the minute he gave up being a young fool?"

She didn't know if he was fishing for a compliment or if he was fishing for confirmation of his foolhardiness, so she said nothing and nodded.

"You're far too good a woman for her," he said, and closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

She wanted to swim in that thought for awhile, try to figure it out, try to figure him out, like he was a person, a man who sang low, sweet love songs to his not-quite-daughter, a man who wiped his glasses too much and knew everything in every volume in this bookshop.

She thought she finally knew what the library must've felt like. Willow said musty and modern and comforting and scary all at once, and like it was new for all of them, but at the same time like they'd been doing it all their lives, and Giles was like the hippest teacher in the history of the world and also "oldy moldy and kinda dull, you know?"

She imagined someone like Giles teaching magic, out of books and failed Watchers' Council experiments and a troubled youth of hashish and fresh-brewed aphrodisiacs. No voice saying "Tara, be careful," no one to tell her how to talk to trees and understand the language of herbs. If I grew up in a library, would I be raising the dead and casting forgetting spells?

If Tara could've sat there forever, trying to say goodbye to Giles, trying to figure out what made her a good witch and Willow a bad witch, what made Giles Giles and not her mother and not Spike, if she could've had an hour to feel the not-enough sleep fuel her thoughts, she could figure it out. Figure out why Willow had never listened to Giles when he warned her, what it was that Willow had to prove, why Willow didn't trust her anymore, what she was afraid of. She would have understood love and magic and learning and yesteryear and how she could go on living with Willow without making a fool out of herself.

But her train of thought was broken when Buffy came in, fake-bouncing in a way that Tara had never seen before, like she knew what the day would bring and was desperate to avoid it, to avert it. She wondered if Willow's eyes would look like that when she told her she knew about Lethe's Bramble, that it was too late--that it was over. Buffy's greeting was subdued, and Tara felt her eyes start to prickle when Giles told her to come back, that they'd spend the day in training, when he waved her aside with the hand that wasn't on Buffy's shoulder.

"B--bye, Giles. Bye Buffy. I'll see you later. Later."


End file.
